


(Un)conditional Love

by DemonBanisher



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Parents, Childhood Trauma, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26914156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonBanisher/pseuds/DemonBanisher
Summary: When Sirius comes back to Hogwarts early to find Remus crying, he doesn't know what to do. Years of feeling unsee and invalidated by his parents have built up and Remus has finally let it all come crashing down. Luckily, he has Sirius to help pull him through it all.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 89





	(Un)conditional Love

**Author's Note:**

> Emotional support fic for anyone who has a complicated relationship with their parents. 
> 
> TW: mild mention of self harm, unsupportive parents, emotional abuse from parents

Remus was crying.

Sirius knew Remus was crying because he could hear him. He was standing outside the door to their room. Peter had gone home to visit his parents for the weekend. James had managed to find some way to sneak into the girl’s dorms to spend the night with Lily. So, it had to be Remus crying, no one else was in there. 

But, despite the rational explanation, there was a part of Sirius that simply knew instinctively from the first sniffle that it was Remus. Even though he had never heard Remus cry before, that first soft sob he overheard cut directly to his heart. As if he was made to recognize the sound of his true love’s pain. To feel every heartache with him. So he wouldn’t be alone. Sirius needed to walk through that door so Remus wouldn’t be alone.

So why was he still standing there? Truth was he was scared. They’d been in this relationship for a year and a half now and he’d never see Remus cry except at the end of books, and even then Remus always said he needed to be alone with the characters and his feelings so the most Sirius ever caught was red eyes and tear streaks after the fact. Remus was the toughest among them. He could bear so much pain, so much hurt and struggle, so much torment and harassment and yet he still always had a smile for his boyfriend. A gentle hand to help a lost first year. A reassuring shoulder for his struggling classmates. If something had cut through all of that and really, truly, hurt his Moony… Sirius couldn’t imagine what it was. 

“Rems?” Sirius asked, pushing the door open gently. He caught sight of the back of Remus’ figure stiffening at the sound of his voice. Remus took a moment before turning to him.

“Siri,” Remus said flashing a smile that seemed so close to real it scared Sirius. He rubbed his eyes quickly to clear any remaining tears. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back til tomorrow.”

“My uncle caught a bad stomach bug, sent me back before I caught it too. Are you okay?”

“Of course,” Remus said flashing that smile again. Damnit, he was a good actor. How long had he been hurting? Had the signs been there all along, but he simply couldn’t see? “You just surprised me that’s all.”

Sirius sat down on the bed next to Moony. He breathed in deeply as he thought about what to say next. He was in uncharted waters and he didn’t want to scare Remus away. Not when he was clearly sinking. 

“Moons,” Sirius said laying a palm over Remus’ hand. “I heard you crying.”

Remus chewed on his lip and refused to look Sirius in the eyes. Sirius could tell he was searching for an answer, an excuse. Remus made the same face every time he came across a difficult transfiguration question or when one of their pranks went sideways and they needed a way out of a bind.  
Sirius reached a hand up and gently tilted Remus’ chin until he was facing him.

“Hey, look at me. I got you, okay? Whatever it is, I wanna know. I can’t promise I can make it hurt less but at least that way you won’t be hurting alone.”

Remus nodded and leaned back against the headboard as he pulled his knees to his chest. 

“It’s my parents,” Remus started. 

Sirius just looked at him and waited. He already had a thousand questions, but he knew he needed to let Remus get it all out or he never would. 

“I… I don’t want you to think they’re shit people, just let me say that first, okay? But there’s all these things they’ve done for years now. Things I rarely even saw or paid attention to and this book that I’m reading just got me thinking about it and now…” Remus breathed in deeply.

“I always thought my parents accepted me being a werewolf, but the truth is I don’t think they ever really did. We don’t…we don’t talk about it in my house. So it just sits there like this unspoken heavy weight. Sometimes when I catch my mom staring at my new scars, I tell her I slipped down the stairs or closed my hand in a drawer. She always laughs it off and calls me clumsy even though she should know – she does know – where they came from. She just doesn’t want to admit it to herself.

“My dad is no better. He’s always on my back about how weak and lazy I am. How I should be more grateful for everything I have for all they gave me, that I have no reason to be lying in bed moping all day. It doesn’t matter that he knows it was just a full moon. It doesn’t matter that he knows that I’m fighting my way through hell. He doesn’t want to admit it to himself

“So, we all go on living our cookie cutter lives pretending everything is fine and I’m supposed to love them. It’s supposed to be okay because at least they didn’t throw me out. At least they take me to the hospital when it’s really bad. At least they’re still together but then it hit me why am I putting all these conditions on their love. Why do I have to tell myself ‘at least’ anything? I’m their son. Shouldn’t that be enough no matter what?”

Remus was trembling now and pulled his knees in tighter to his chest as fresh sobs came pouring free. Sirius wanted to hold him, but he seemed so fragile right now and if Sirius knew anything from his own experience it was that sometimes we don’t want to be held. Sometimes we don’t want someone to hold us together while we are falling apart. We just want someone to watch. Someone to bear witness to all the pain we’re going through. 

Still it didn’t stop the pain in Sirius’ chest from seeing Remus like this. The ache he felt when he understood that Remus never felt good enough for his parents. That by ignoring this vital part of his identity they had turned him into a ghost. All Remus could do was haunt his own home.

Remus seemed to suddenly become aware of Sirius’ eyes on him and he straightened up a bit and wiped his face on the back of his sleeve.

“Shit, sorry Pads. You’re the last person I should be bitching to about this. I mean my parents aren’t anything like yours. At least –“

“Hey,” Sirius said cutting him off. “Don’t say that. It doesn’t matter one bit what my parents were like. Pain isn’t a competition. Childhood trauma isn’t either. You don’t need to prove to anyone that your parents were shitty enough or believe that they should have been shittier to acknowledge the fact that they’ve fucked you up.”

Remus nodded and his eyes welled up again as his bottom lip began to quiver. “Don’t they love me? They keep telling me they love me, and I want to believe it. I can see in their eyes that they believe it, but then they abandoned me when I needed them most.” Remus sniffled again and rubbed his face before continuing. “You know what hurts the most? A couple years ago my aunt was in an awful attack. She got mugged and was pretty bruised physically and mentally. I watched my parents sit by her side every day. Chat with her, take her to therapy, help clean up her bruises, take away all the sharp things so she couldn’t hurt herself. My parents got mad at me a lot then. They said I was being rude to my aunt, that I should have been more supportive of her pain and her healing. I look back now and realize it wasn’t my aunt I was mad at: it was them. They had just proven to me that they had the capability to do everything I had ever wanted from them. They couldn’t acknowledge my pain, my condition, but here they were doing it for someone else.”

The reality of what Remus had just said created a heavy weight in the room. When Remus spoke next it was barely a whisper, so soft that Sirius almost missed it.

“Why am I not enough?”

Sirius kissed his tawny curls before resting his head on Remus’ shoulder. One hand still gently stroking his head. 

“You’re enough Rems.”

“Then why couldn’t they love me like that?”

“I don’t know Remus I really don’t know.”

“God,” Remus said stretching a hand under his bloodshot and swollen eyes. “They’re coming up to visit in a week, how am I supposed to act normal around them? The past couple of days I’ve been simmering between wanting to scream and throw things at them and wanting to just break down crying and beg for their forgiveness.”

“So, tell them not to come.” 

Remus looked at him, baffled that he could say that like it was the simplest thing in the world.

“I can’t do that Pads. After everything they’ve done for me. I can’t just –“

“Yes, you can. It doesn’t matter what they did for you or how ‘good’ they were. They picked and chose what parts of you they wanted to love. You’re their son. They should love all of you. The good, the bad, and the ugly: no matter what.”

Remus chewed on his lip, deep in thought again. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have spoken up more, helped them understand.”

“How old were you when you were turned Remus?” Sirius eyes bore into him with an intensity that made Remus both want to tell him everything and hide from him forever, scared at what he might reveal now that the words were all rushing out.

“Pads, you know.”

“How old Rems?”

“Four,” Remus whispered it softly, like a secret, and Sirius thought he might finally understand why after knowing about Remus lycanthropy for years, Remus still tried to act like everything was fine. He wouldn’t tell Sirius when he was sore and battered, even when it was clear he was walking with a limp. He’d say he had a migraine, when really the pull of the moon was so bad all Remus could do was lie in bed. How many times had Remus blamed an upset stomach on his lack of appetite? Sirius knew. All his friends knew. But still, Remus acted as if he was forbidden to say it out loud. At first Sirius had thought he was afraid of getting caught, now he knew Remus didn’t feel this was a part of him worth loving, worth knowing. His whole life Remus had been brainwashed that this was something he didn’t speak about, that we didn’t speak it. He’d learned it at his parents’ knee and lived with that belief ever since. 

“Exactly,” Sirius said, feeling an anger bubbling up in his chest too. “You were a child Moons. How the hell were you supposed to teach them about what was going on inside of you when you didn’t understand it yourself? You were a kid. They were the parents. It was their responsibility to do their own research and learn how to help you. It’s not your responsibility to help them understand.”

“I just don’t want them hate me if I shut them out. I don’t want them to not think that I’m not grateful. That I didn’t see the good they did.”

“I know Rems,” Sirius said lacing his fingers through Remus’. “And no one is saying you have to shut them out forever. But I think right now you need a little time, to sort yourself out, to decide how to look out for yourself moving forward and make sure this relationship benefits you and doesn’t hurt you in the long run. And I know it’s scary but that might mean putting up some walls. It’s going to hurt but you have to remember you need to protect your heart, okay? I’m quite fond of it and I won’t do with anyone beating it up.”

Remus smiled softly at that, which made Sirius smile in return. He didn’t know if he was saying the right things, but he dearly hoped he was being helpful. All that mattered to him was that Remus knew that he was here and that he loved him. All of him, unconditionally. There was no ‘at least’ for him. He was all in.

“Rems?”

“Mm?”

“Do you still love them?”

Sirius didn’t know where the question had come from. It had slipped out of him before he could even think.

Remus sighed deeply and squeezed his eyes tight for a moment before responding. “I think… I think I still do. But I think that love has been shattered in a way and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick all the pieces back up. I don’t know if I’ll cut myself more by trying.”

Sirius nodded gently, lost in his own somber thoughts. He knew something about loving people who burn you. He knew something about holding on to a love that just made you bleed. Even when you put the pieces back down it doesn’t mean you stop loving them, it’s just you realize you can’t live with the pain anymore. Sirius hated his parents wholeheartedly but there was a tiny piece of him that remembered how his Dad used to tuck him in too tightly at night as if he was scared Sirius might fly away and how his Mum used to slip him chocolates before dinner with a finger held against her lips and a wink. Sirius knew his parents had loved him once and for a long time a part of him still held onto hope that one day they would again. Sometimes that old flame would reignite itself in his heart. But Sirius always had Remus, James, and Peter to help him stamp those ashes down again by reminding him of the reality, no matter how much it hurt. 

“I understand,” Sirius said and then he slid down on the bed before pulling Remus against his chest and he just held him. Sometimes Remus would start crying again and Sirius held him just as tightly then too, maybe a little more as if to remind Remus that he was there. 

When Remus tears were drying, and the first light of morning was cresting over the horizon Sirius finally spoke again.

“I need you to know there are no conditions on my love Rems. I want all of you. No matter how angry or sad you get as you sort through all this shit, I want you to come to me. I want you to know you can come to me. I might not always have the answers, but I’ll be here. And…and I know talking about your lycanthropy is hard, I think I understand why better now, but maybe we could work up to you squeezing my hand when something is wrong. You can tell me you slept funny, or you aren’t hungry, or you had too much school work, but if you squeeze my hand then I’ll know it’s a werewolf thing and I won’t bug you about it but I can squeeze your hand back to remind you that I see you, and I love you no matter what.”

Remus nodded and squeezed Sirius’ hand gently, testing it out.

“Exactly,” Sirius smiled. Then he leaned in and gave Remus a soft kiss on the cheek. “I’m all in Moony, you’re it for me. I love you always.”

“I love you too Padfoot.”

A few weeks later Remus was sitting beside Sirius at breakfast. He hadn’t gotten the courage up to not ask his parents to come and instead spent the whole weekend feeling like he was in a play he’d suddenly forgotten all the lines to. It took everything in him to hold it together for his parents and Sirius was there each night when he fell apart. Remus was still angry and sad more often than not. Seventeen years of pain and denial don’t wash away overnight. He was still trying to pick up the broken pieces and still getting cut. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be ready to let go completely. He wasn’t sure if he could. 

And suddenly, it was a few days before the full moon and Remus felt like he was going to throw up. He was focusing on a pimple on James’ forehead so the room would stop spinning. 

“You alright mate?” James asked, squinting at Remus over his glasses and bowl of porridge. 

“Fine, just tired is all.”

James nodded and went back to his breakfast. Underneath the table Remus’ fingers found Sirius’ hand and squeezed tight. Through the hurricane of emotions and years of pent of resentment and invalidation, Remus had this. His one beautiful constant in the storm. And when Sirius squeezed back it was in a language that only Remus could understand. It said: “I’m here. I see all of you. And I love you, unconditionally.”

**Author's Note:**

> For me, this fic has a lot to do with lycanthropy standing in for dealing with a mental illness and the experience of stigma. Hope you enjoyed or that this fic help you feel a little more see. Comments and kudos are appreciated!


End file.
